The Place Where All Super Soldiers Meet
by Marvelgeek42
Summary: The Avengers, minus Thor, learn something about themselves and each other.


**Inspired by Experiments by _SilverWolf329_.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything except Clary and Jasper Redbird.**

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The Avengers, except for Thor who had business on Asgard, sat together at the kitchen table, eating pizza.

Clint was the first to be finished (Steve and Bruce needed more food, Tony hadn't eaten in days and Natasha ate slower than Clint) so he tried to stand up.

He couldn't.

Tony and Natasha noticed that immediately and tried to stand up themselves. Which in turn Steve and Bruce noticed.

None of them could either.

"What the -" Clint started but he was interrupted by a letter falling on his lap and five sheets of paper on Tony's.

Hello Avengers,

**You're wondering who made you unable to leave and why, aren't you?**

Well, Hel granted my brother a visit in Valhalla...Yes, I didn't know she is able to do this either. Or why she did it. **'Cause I'm awesome. That's why. **Yes, whatever. We are not letting you go until you finish reading this. This is what my brother found. **It's the...journal of Dr. Erskine.** As you know, Thor is on Asgard. That's out of our reach.

As soon as you're finished you can all go.

Racyl **and Parjes** Bidredr

**PS: No, not our real names, so don't even try searching us. **I bet one of them can figure it out anyways. **Don't ruin my fun, sis. **I wonder if the hunters of Artemis are real...and recuting.

Tony could see their names were Clary and Jasper Redbird. They just mixed the letters the same way Tom Riddle did.

The others didn't seem to realize this, though.

Tony took the papers from his lap and started to read it for himself. After maybe twenty to thirty seconds, he was finished.

In the Meantime Steve and Bruce told Clint and Natasha who Dr. Erskine was.

"It's about us. And it's written in Dr. Erskine's point of view."

Tony began to read out loud.

**They didn't get it wrong. The serum, I mean.**

"Excuse me?!" Bruce protested.

**The serum was always perfect.**

Now he snorted.

**What they didn't understand was the recipient. They always got the recipient wrong.**

"What?" everybody asked.

**There was a reason I didn't just give the serum to anybody.**

Steve shuddered.

"What's on your mind, Cap?" Tony asked noticing his teammates' movement.

"The Red Skrull was injected the serum," Steve answered. "You should see his name as a description."

**The serum will latch onto the person, not their body, but their mentality. It will bring out the best and the worst in you.**

"Good will become great, but bad will become worse," quoted both, Steve and Tony.

"How do you know that?" Steve inquired.

"Dear Dad told me. Again and again and again," Tony muttered the last part under his breath.

**In your mind, not your body.**

Bruce snorted again.

**Steve… Steve was a good kid. Humble, kind, and strong. He wasn't muscular or heavy, no. He was resistant, and moral. Righteous.**

"Yep, sounds like Steve," Clint commented.

Steve blushed.

**So the serum took that and gave it a bodily form, and Captain America was born. Good, strong, and wise. Quick, agile, and smart. He was Steve Rogers, and nothing more. He was the Steve that was meant to be.**

Steve did an amazing interpretation of a tomato which caused Natasha to sigh.

"You really need to learn how to take compliments."

"Hypocrite", Clint mumbled quietly enough no one could hear.

**But the others… They weren't all good, like Steve was. Like they needed to be for the serum to be "successful."**

"Why, thank you," every other Avenger present, except for Clint, thought.

Tony turned to the next page.

**Bruce Banner.**

"How does he even know me?"

**He was a good man, yes. But he had anger management issues.**

"Many abused kids have..." Tony muttered inaudible, "Me included."

**So the serum latched on to that, and turned Bruce Banner's soldier into one triggered by rage.**

„Oh...that makes sense I guess," Bruce admitted.

**He had a major inferiority complex,so the serum latched onto that, and turned Bruce Banner's soldier into one that felt the need to prove his strength.**

„Well, if you put it that way..." Clint whispered.

**He was brought up in an abusive household,**

"Wait, you were abused?" Steve asked surprised.

"Steve, you and Thor are the only ones of us who were not abused or neglected or trained to be an assassin or a war monger or a combination of these before you hit double digits," Tony explained, "But if you think of Loki I'm not sure it counts."

Bruce, Clint and Natasha nodded along.

Steve wondered what had happened to Howard to do something like this. The man he met would never have done something like this.

**so the serum latched on to that, and turned Bruce Banner's soldier into a monster.**

"Okay, I understand that," Bruce spoke.

Tony turned to the next page, wondering when it would be his turn (even though he knew).

**Natasha Romanoff. Or, at the time of the injection, Natalia Alianova. Natalia had the potential to become a great person,**

"I don't believe you."

**she really did.**

"I still don't believe you," Natasha repeated herself, still speaking in Russian.

**But with the way she was raised and taught, she was not.**

"Obviously"

"You're trying, aren't you? That's all that counts!" Tony protested.

Bruce formed the word 'Hypocrite' on his lips but didn't speak it.

**At the time of the injection, Natalia was young, and there was not much for the serum to latch onto. So it took her basic identity and enhanced that.**

"How old were you?" Steve asked concerned.

"I was six years old."

**Natalia was beautiful, but in a youthful manner. The serum took that, and warped it. She grew and became a beautiful woman, but in the span of a few minutes rather than years.**

"Errr, how old are you?" Clint wondered.

"You don't ask a woman about her age."

"But I can research when you were injected the serum and you said you were six," Tony proclaimed.

**Her skin stayed clear and pale, her hair long and lush, her body full and desirable.**

"Can't disagree with that," Clint complimented.

**Natalia was clever. The serum took that, and boosted it. She became a manipulator rather than a soldier. A spy, not a fighter.**

"Most definitely," Bruce agreed.

**Natalia had a fire in her soul. The spirit of a fighter. But because the serum had already made her a spy, it couldn't make her a fighter. So it made her stronger and hardier.**

**In essence, the Red Room took the super soldier serum and made it into a super spy serum.**

"Super spy serum..." Tony muttered amused of the sound, turning the page and continuing.

**And finally, there was Tony Stark.**

"WHAT?!" Bruce, Steve and Clint yelled in protest.

"You were injected with the serum?" Natasha wondered.

Instead of answering, Tony just continued.

**The serum was injected into Tony just a minute after he was born, by an overzealous father that wanted his almost-son back.**

"Almost-son? I was nowhere near that!" Steve protested.

"In his mind you were," Tony explained.

**Tony Stark was different from all the others, in the sense that the serum did not make its changes apparent.**

"I can see that," Clint commented.

**Yes, he received the full benefit of the serum, but he hid it.**

"Why?" Steve wondered.

"Are you really asking that question, Captain Iglo? Now, let's take a second and imagine how the media would react," Tony said before continuing.

**He hid it and it looked like it went away, but it was always there. The serum doesn't let go that easily.**

Bruce snorted. He seemed to be doing this a lot today.

**Anthony was smart; there was no doubt about it. Even before the serum, Anthony had a genius-level IQ.**

"See, I am a genius. Not just Self-Proclaimed," Tony corrected in the vague direction of Natasha and Steve.

**So when Howard injected the serum into the squalling baby that was his son, that was the first thing the serum went for.**

"You saw the results," Tony showed off.

"You can't be that smart," Clint protested.

Tony smiled. They would see the truth soon.

**It enhanced his brain to a level no human on Earth could even begin to comprehend.**

"What!" the others exclaimed in disbelief.

"Right now I'm following the story, planning my date with Pep, planning updates for the StarkPhone and the StarkPad, planning a gala and a speech, things connected with Pep you don't want to know, collecting arguments for a positive public statement about Mutants and some more things. Also, I can analyze anyone in seconds. Honestly, I'm getting more like Sherlock Holmes every day. That's why I rarely sleep. My brain won't let me," Tony explained.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Clint voiced his opinion on that matter.

**Not Bruce Banner, not Reed Richards, not Bruce Wayne.**

Tony grinned. He knew who Wayne secretly was. It was obvious... at least for him.

The others wondered why Tony smiled. They had no clue.

What was again obvious to Tony so he laughed.

**Anthony had such an advanced brain that he was thinking and talking in full sentences before he left the hospital.**

Everyone stared at Stark.

"Wow..." Bruce breathed out astonished.

**Anthony was strong. He had, born with him, the inborn ability to take anything life threw at him and turn it to his advantage.**

"Really?" Steve wondered.

"I've been kidnapped and tortured. I came out of the cave with the Reactor and my first suit. Does that answer you question?"

**So the serum took that, and turned it into an almost supernatural ability to get back on his feet no matter what happened.**

"Yep," confirmed Tony.

**But because Howard couldn't raise Tony like Steve had been raised, Tony's greatest ability had been locked.**

"Howard was-" Steve protested still not believing Howard could do something like this.

"As the serum-guy implied and I told you already, he was no good father," Tony explained slowly, as if he was talking to a five-year-old.

**Tony just couldn't be a good person.**

"As you said yourself: You try. That what counts," Bruce quoted.

Tony looked like he wanted to protest for not even a second, but he knew it would be pointless.

**He tried, he really did. But when the serum was working its hardest, when Tony was a toddler, he wasn't raised to be good.**

"I still don't really bel-"

"For the third time: I have roughly the same backstory as Loki and Harry Potter combined."

"But Harry Potter is a great guy," Bruce noted.

"Yeah," Tony agreed. "But he had good friends from eleven onward. Me? Rhodey is my longest friend and I met him when I was sixteen. My godfather sold me to terrorists. Not something Sirius Black would do"

"Point," Clint acknowledged.

**Instead, Howard, for the most part, ignored him, leaving Tony sarcastic, tough, and incapable of feeling human emotions.**

The people in the room didn't really know what to say after this.

**It's a shame, really. Tony would have made a great Captain America.**

I'm not so sure about that, Tony thought.

He turned the page and read on.

**There were countless others that tried recreating the perfect super soldier. They all failed, of course, but that's what you get when you don't read the instructions.**

Bruce looked like he wanted to bang his head on the table.

**The ones in Moscow, Beijing and Rio de Janerio were particular disasters. Mutants, horrible mutants, all of them, with barely the ability to think in a normal human fashion.**

"...must have been horrible people," Steve announced.

**Some of them only enhanced a tiny part of the recipient. Like Clint's eyesight was the only thing changed about him.**

"That was what they injected me with?!" Clint exclaimed shocked.

**Nobody really understood it, I guess, when I wrote heart and brain over body. I guess they just dismissed it as a doodle. I meant it, though, what I wrote.**

"...That's WAY to obvious by my standards..." Tony commented

"Well, I didn't think so...obviously..." Bruce grumbled disappointed of himself.

"I said by MY standards, didn't I?" Tony tried to cheer Bruce up.

Somehow it worked.

**Everyone else was chosen for something other than their heart and brain. Usually it was the body, but sometimes it was just luck. It was always the wrong person, though. Always.**

The Avengers but suddenly became interested in their shoes while smiling sadly.

**They never really saw my notes, I made sure of that. There were a few things in those notes that were just not meant for the general public, but they saw enough.**

**I made sure heart plus brain over body was in those notes. Yet they ignored it. Bruce Banner, the Red Room, even Howard Stark ignored it.**

Bruce looked down. It was so obvious! Looking back at least.

**I guess it might have been a good thing, though.**

Bruce snorted.

"We met through this repeated ignorance," Tony stated.

Everyone looked at him.

**It brought the ragtag group of five experiments (plus one Asgardian god) and made them into a group of heroes. The ** **Avengers.**

**Heh. That's catchy.**

"Seconded. And it made it rather easy to find a motto," Tony agreed.

"We have a motto?" questioned Steve

"Not officially, but if anyone asks me, I'll say, what I said Loki: 'If we can't protect earth, you can be damn sure we'll avenge it," Tony responded.

Clint raise his hand. "I vote for that to be official!"

**And maybe, when they… perish, they'll come here too.**

"Where?" Natasha asked.

"As I saw him dying: afterlife..." Steve pointed out the obvious.

"There is no way any sane person would allow me in heaven. Or hell for that matter," Tony objected.

**They'll come to this place, where time and space mean nothing, where the only thing there is to do is think. The place that is white and pristine and pure and clean. Yes… I think they really will come here.**

I disagree, both Natasha and Tony thought.

"YOU TRY! BOTH OF YOU!" Clint yelled, suspecting their thoughts.

**I really would love to see Steve again, such a nice boy. And I'd love to officially meet Natasha and Bruce and Tony and Clint. I really actually do hope they come here.**

"Don't count on that, Erskine," Tony muttered

"Who?" Clint asked, having forgotten who Erskine was.

"That's the name of the serum-guy," Tony reminded Clint.

**To the place where all super soldiers meet.**

"But we met already!" Clint protested.

"That's the end," Tony announced, finally being able to stand up and leave. He had work to do.

The others sat there for a while thinking of what they read. They understood themselves and each other better.

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**Randominaor Owl: Thank you!**

**Avenger Assemble: Thank you! I am Team Iron Man (I feel like I am going to regrent saying this, so I'll add that I have not yet seen the movie, but I have been spoilered by people on the team).**

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**So, yeah. I might do more of these, if you give me stories. Or if I find some.**

**~Marvelgeek42**


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